Part 110

Ferdinand I., King of Castile, 1035-1065; King of Leon, 1037-1065.

Ferdinand I., King of Naples, 1458-1494.

Ferdinand II., Germanic Emperor and King of Bohemia and Hungary, 1619-1637.

Ferdinand II., King of Aragon, 1479-1516; V. of Castile (King-Consort of Isabella of Castile and Regent), 1474-1516; II. of Sicily, 1479-1516; and III. of Naples, 1503-1516.

Ferdinand II., King of Leon, 1157-1188.

Ferdinand II., King of Naples, 1495-1496.

Ferdinand II., called Bomba, King of the Two Sicilies, 1830-1859.

Ferdinand III., Germanic Emperor, and King of Hungary and Bohemia, 1637-1657.

Ferdinand III., King of Castile, 1217-1230; King of Leon and Castile, united, 1230-1252.

Ferdinand IV., King of Leon and Castile, 1295-1312.

Ferdinand IV., King of Naples, and I. of the Two Sicilies, 1759-1806; and 1815-1825.

Ferdinand VI., King of Spain, 1746-1759.

Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, 1808; and 1814-1833.

FERIÆ.

See LUDI.

FERM.--FIRMA.--FARM.

"A sort of composition for all the profits arising to the king [in England, Norman period] from his ancient claims on the land and from the judicial proceedings of the shire-moot; the rent of detached pieces of demesne land, the remnants of the ancient folk-land; the payments due from corporate bodies and individuals for the primitive gifts, the offerings made in kind, or the hospitality--the feorm-fultum--which the kings had a right to exact from their subjects, and which were before the time of Domesday generally commuted for money; the fines, or a portion of the fines, paid in the ordinary process of the county courts, and other small miscellaneous incidents. These had been, soon after the composition of Domesday, estimated at a fixed sum, which was regarded as a sort of rent or composition at which the county was let to the sheriff and recorded in the 'Rotulus Exactorious'; for this, under the name of ferm, he answered annually; if his receipts were in excess, he retained the balance as his lawful profit, the wages of his service; if the proceeds fell below the ferm, he had to pay the difference from his own purse. ... The farm, ferm, or firma, the rent or composition for the ancient feorm-fultum, or provision payable in kind to the Anglo-Saxon kings. The history of the word in its French form would be interesting. The use of the word for a pecuniary payment is traced long before the Norman Conquest."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 11, section 126, and note._

FERNANDO.

See FERDINAND.

FEROZESHUR, Battle of (1845)

See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849.

FERRARA: The House of Este.

See ESTE.

FERRARA: A. D. 1275. Sovereignty of the Pope confirmed by Rodolph of Hapsburg.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1273-1308.

FERRARA: A. D. 1597. Annexation to the states of the Church. End of the house of Este. Decay of the city and duchy.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1597.

FERRARA: A. D. 1797. Joined to the Cispadine Republic.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796-1797 (OCTOBER-APRIL).

FERRARA: End----------

FERRY BRIDGE, Battle of (1461).

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471,

FETIALES.--FECIALES.

"The duties of the feciales, or fetiales [among the Romans]. extended over every branch of international law. They gave advice on all matters of peace or war, and the conclusion of treaties and alliances. ... They fulfilled the same functions as heralds, and, as such, were frequently entrusted with important communications. They were also sent on regular embassies. To them was entrusted the reception and entertainment of foreign envoys. They were required to decide on the justice of a war about to commence, and to proclaim and consecrate it according to certain established formalities. ... The College of Feciales consisted of nearly twenty members, with a president, who was called Pater Patratus, because it was necessary that he should have both father and children living, that he might be supposed to take greater interest in the welfare of the State, and look backwards as well as forwards. ... The name of Feciales ... still existed under the emperors, as well as that of Pater Patratus, though only as a title of honour, while the institution itself was for ever annihilated; and, after the reign of Tiberius, we cannot find any trace of it."

_E. C. G. Murray, Embassies and Foreign Courts, pages 8-10._

See, also, AUGURS.

{1117}

FEUDAL TENURES.

"After the feudal system of tenure had been fully established, all lands were held subject to certain additional obligations, which were due either to the King (not as sovereign, but as feudal lord) from the original grantees, called tenants-in-chief (tenentes in capite), or to the tenants-in-chief themselves from their under tenants. Of these obligations the most honourable was that of knight-service. This was the tenure by which the King granted out fiefs to his followers, and by which they in turn provided for their own military retainers. The lands of the bishops and dignified ecclesiastics, and of most of the religious foundations, were also held by this tenure. A few exceptions only were made in favour of lands which had been immemorially held in frankalmoign, or free-alms. On the grant of a fief, the tenant was publicly invested with the land by a symbolical or actual delivery, termed livery of seisin. He then did homage, so called from the words used in the ceremony: 'Je deveigne votre homme' ['I become your man']. ... In the case of a sub-tenant (vavassor), his oath of fealty was guarded by a reservation of the faith due to his sovereign lord the King. For every portion of land of the annual value of £20, which constituted a knight's fee [in England], the tenant was bound, whenever required, to render the services of a knight properly armed and accoutred, to serve in the field forty days at his own expense. ... Tenure by knight-service was also subject to several other incidents of a burdensome character. ... There was a species of tenancy in chief by Grand Serjeanty, ... whereby the tenant was bound, instead of serving the King generally in his wars, to do some special service in his own proper person, as to carry the King's banner or lance, or to be his champion, butler, or other officer at his coronation. ... Grants of land were also made by the King to his inferior followers and personal attendants, to be held by meaner services. ... Hence, probably, arose tenure by Petit Serjeanty, though later on we find that term restricted to tenure 'in capite' by the service of rendering yearly some implement of war to the King. ... Tenure in Free Socage (which still subsists under the modern denomination of Freehold, and may be regarded as the representative of the primitive alodial ownership) denotes, in its most general and extensive signification, a tenure by any certain and determinate service, as to pay a fixed money rent, or to plough the lord's land for a fixed number of days in the year. ... Tenure in Burgage was a kind of town socage. It applied to tenements in any ancient borough, held by the burgesses, of the King or other lord, by fixed rents or services. ... This tenure, which still subsists, is subject to a variety of local customs, the most remarkable of which is that of borough-English, by which the burgage tenement descends to the youngest instead of to the eldest son. Gavelkind is almost confined to the county of Kent. ... The lands are held by suit of court and fealty, a service in its nature certain. The tenant in Gavelkind retained many of the properties of alodial ownership: his lands were devisable by will; in case of intestacy they descended to all his sons equally; they were not liable to escheat for felony ... and they could be aliened by the tenant at the age of fifteen. Below Free Socage was the tenure in Villeinage, by which the agricultural labourers, both free and servile, held the land which was to them in lieu of money wages."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, pages 58-65._

FEUDALISM.

"Feudalism, the comprehensive idea which includes the whole governmental policy of the French kingdom, was of distinctly Frank growth. The principle which underlies it may be universal; but the historic development of it with which the constitutional history of Europe is concerned may be traced step by step under Frank influence, from its first appearance on the conquered soil of Roman Gaul to its full development in the jurisprudence of the Middle Ages. In the form which it has reached at the Norman Conquest, it may be described as a complete organisation of society through the medium of land tenure, in which from the king down to the lowest landowner all are bound together by obligation of service and defence: the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord; the defence and service being based on and regulated by the nature and extent of the land held by the one of the other. In those states which have reached the territorial stage of development, the rights of defence and service are supplemented by the right of jurisdiction. The lord judges as well as defends his vassal; the vassal does suit as well as service to his lord. In states in which feudal government has reached its utmost growth, the political, financial, judicial, every branch of public administration, is regulated by the same conditions. The central authority is a mere shadow of a name. This institution had grown up from two great sources--the beneficium, and the practice of commendation,--and had been specially fostered on Gallic soil by the existence of a subject population which admitted of any amount of extension in the methods of dependence. The beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of land made by the kings out of their own estates to their kinsmen and servants, with a special undertaking to be faithful; partly in the surrender by landowners of their estates to churches or powerful men, to be received back again and held by them as tenants for rent or service. By the latter arrangement the weaker man obtained the protection of the stronger, and he who felt himself insecure placed his title under the defence of the church. By the practice of commendation, on the other hand, the inferior put himself under the personal care of a lord, but without altering his title or divesting himself of his right to his estate; he became a vassal and did homage. ... The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation; the two-fold hold on the land, that of the lord and that of the vassal, was supplemented by the two-fold engagement, that of the lord to defend, and that of the vassal to be faithful. A third ingredient was supplied by the grants of immunity by which in the Frank empire, as in England, the possession of land was united with the right of judicature: the dwellers on a feudal property were placed under the tribunal of the lord, and the rights which had belonged to the nation or to its chosen head were devolved upon the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of the system thus originated, and the assimilation of all other tenures to it, may be regarded as the work of the tenth century; but as early as A. D. 877 Charles the Bald recognised the hereditary character of all benefices; and from that year the growth of strictly feudal jurisprudence may be held to date. The system testifies to the country and causes of its birth. {1118} The beneficium is partly of Roman, partly of German origin. ... Commendation on the other hand may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin, and an analogy only with the Roman clientship. ... The word feudum, fief, or fee, is derived from the German word for cattle (Gothic 'faihu'; Old High German 'fihu'; Old Saxon 'fehu'; Anglo-Saxon 'feoh'); the secondary meaning being goods, especially money: hence property in general. The letter _d_ is perhaps a mere insertion for sound's sake; but it has been interpreted as part of a second root, _od_, also meaning property, in which case the first syllable has a third meaning, that of fee or reward, and the whole word means property given by way of reward for service. But this is improbable. ... The word feodum is not found earlier than the close of the ninth century."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 9, section 93, and notes (volume 1)._

"The regular machinery and systematic establishment of feuds, in fact, may be considered as almost confined to the dominions of Charlemagne, and to those countries which afterwards derived it from thence. In England it can hardly be thought to have existed in a complete state, before the Conquest. Scotland, it is supposed, borrowed it soon after from her neighbour. The Lombards of Benevento had introduced feudal customs into the Neapolitan provinces, which the Norman conquerors afterwards perfected. Feudal tenures were so general in the kingdom of Aragon, that I reckon it among the monarchies which were founded upon that basis. Charlemagne's empire, it must be remembered, extended as far as the Ebro. But in Castile and Portugal they were very rare, and certainly could produce no political effect. Benefices for life were sometimes granted in the kingdoms of Denmark and Bohemia. Neither of these, however, nor Sweden, nor Hungary, come under the description of countries influenced by the feudal system."

_H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 2._

"Hardly any point in the whole history of European institutions has been the subject of so violent controversy as this of the origin of Feudalism. It was formerly supposed that Feudalism was only a somewhat more developed form of the ancient Germanic 'following' transplanted to Roman soil, but a more critical examination of the documents of the early period soon showed that there was more to it than this. It became evident that Feudalism was not so simple as had at first appeared. ... When, however, scholars had come to see this, they then found themselves at variance upon the details of the process by which the popular monarchical arrangements of the early Franks were converted into the aristocratic forms of the later Feudalism. While they agreed upon the essential fact that the Germans, at the time of their emergence from their original seats and their occupation of the Roman lands, were not mere wandering groups of freebooters, as the earlier school had represented them, but well-organized nations, with a very distinct sense of political organization, they found themselves hopelessly divided on the question how this national life had, in the course of time, come to assume forms so very different from those of the primitive German. The first person to represent what we may call the modern view of the feudal system was Georg Waitz, in the first edition of his History of the German Constitution, in the years 1844-47. Waitz presented the thing as a gradual growth during several centuries, the various elements of which it was composed growing up side by side without definite chronological sequence. This view was met by Paul Roth in his History of the Institution of the Benefice, in the year 1850. He maintained that royal benefices were unknown to the Merovingian Franks, and that they were an innovation of the earliest Carolingians. They were, so he believed, made possible by a grand confiscation of the lands of the Church, not by Charles Martel, as the earlier writers had believed, but by his sons, Pippin and Karlmann. The first book of Roth was followed in the year 1863 by another on Feudalism and the Relation of the Subject to the State, (Feudalität und Unterthanenverband), in which he attempted to show that the direct subjection of the individual to the government was not a strange idea to the early German, but that it pervaded all forms of Germanic life down to the Carolingian times, and that therefore the feudal relation was a something entirely new, a break in the practice of the Germans. In the years 1880-1885 appeared a new edition of Waitz's History of the German Constitution, in which, after acknowledging the great services rendered by Roth to the cause of learning, he declares himself unable to give up his former point of view, and brings new evidence in support of it. Thus for more than thirty years this question has been before the world of scholars, and may be regarded as being quite as far from a settlement as ever."

_E. Emerton, An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages, page 236 (foot-note)._

ALSO IN: _F. P. Guizot, History of Civilization: Second Course, lecture 2._

See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 987-1327.

FEUILLANTS, Club and Party of the.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1790, and 1791 (OCTOBER).

FEZ: Founding of the city and kingdom.

See EDRISITES.

FIANNA EIRINN.

The ancient militia of Erin, famous in old Irish romance and song.

_T. Moore, History of Ireland, volume 1, chapter 7._

FIDENÆ.

An ancient city on the left bank of the Tiber, only five miles from Rome, originally Latin, but afterwards containing a mixed Latin and Etruscan population. It was at war with Rome until the latter destroyed it, B. C. 426.

_W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 2, chapter 15._

FIEFS.

See FEUDAL TENURES; and FEUDALISM.

FIELD OF LIES, The.

Ludwig, or Louis, the Pious, son and successor of Charlemagne, was a man of gentle character, and good intentions--too amiable and too honest in his virtues for the commanding of a great empire in times so rude. He lost the control of his state, and his family, alike. His own sons headed a succession of revolts against his authority. The second of these insurrections occurred in the year 833. Father and sons confronted one another with hostile armies, on the plain of Rothfeld, not far from Colmar in Alsace. Intrigue instead of battle settled the controversy, for the time being. The adherents of the old emperor were all enticed away from him, and he found himself wholly deserted and alone. To signify the treacherous methods by which this defection was brought about, the "Rothfeld" (Red-field) on which it occurred received the name of "Lügenfeld," or Field of Lies.

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, The French under the Carlovingians; translated by Bellingham, chapter 7._

{1119}

FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, The.

The place of the famous meeting of Henry VIII. of England with Francis I. of France, which took place in the summer of 1520 [see FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523], is notable in history, from the magnificence of the preparations made for it, as The Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was at Guisnes, or between Guisnes and Arde, near Calais (then English territory). "Guisnes and its castle offered little attraction, and if possible less accommodation, to the gay throng now to be gathered within its walls. ... But on the castle green, within the limits of a few weeks, and in the face of great difficulties, the English artists of that day contrived a summer palace, more like a vision of romance, the creation of some fairy dream (if the accounts of eye-witnesses of all classes may be trusted), than the dull every-day reality of clay-born bricks and mortar. No 'palace of art' in these beclouded climates of the West ever so truly deserved its name. ... The palace was an exact square of 328 feet. It was pierced on every side with oriel windows and clerestories curiously glazed, the mullions and posts of which were overlaid with gold. An embattled gate, ornamented on both sides with statues representing men in various attitudes of war, and flanked by an embattled tower, guarded the entrance. From this gate to the entrance of the palace arose in long ascent a sloping daïs or hall-pace, along which were grouped 'images of sore and terrible countenances,' in armour of argentine or bright metal. At the entrance, under an embowed landing place, facing the great doors, stood 'antique' (classical) figures girt with olive branches. The passages, the roofs of the galleries from place to place and from chamber to chamber, were ceiled and covered with white silk, fluted and embowed with silken hanging of divers colours and braided cloths, 'which showed like bullions of fine burnished gold.' The roofs of the chambers were studded with roses, set in lozenges, and diapered on a ground of fine gold. Panels enriched with antique carving and gilt bosses covered the spaces between the windows; whilst all along the corridors and from every window hung tapestry of silk and gold, embroidered with figures. ... To the palace was attached a spacious chapel, still more sumptuously adorned. Its altars were hung with cloth of gold tissue embroidered with pearls; cloth of gold covered the walls and desks. ... Outside the palace gate, on the greensward, stood a gilt fountain, of antique workmanship, with a statue of Bacchus 'birlying the wine.' Three runlets, fed by secret conduits hid beneath the earth, spouted claret, hypocras, and water into as many silver cups, to quench the thirst of all comers. ... In long array, in the plain beyond, 2,800 tents stretched their white canvas before the eyes of the spectator, gay with the pennons, badges, and devices of the various occupants; whilst miscellaneous followers, in tens of thousands, attracted by profit or the novelty of the scene, camped on the grass and filled the surrounding slopes, in spite of the severity of provost-marshal and reiterated threats of mutilation and chastisement. ... From the 4th of June, when Henry first entered Guisnes, the festivities continued with unabated splendour for twenty days. ... The two kings parted on the best of terms, as the world thought."

_J. S. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII., chapter 12._

ALSO IN: _Lady Jackson, The Court of France in the 16th Century, volume 1, chapters 11-12._

_Miss Pardoe, The Court and Reign of Francis I., volume 1, chapter 14._

FIESCO, Conspiracy of.

See GENOA: A. D. 1528-1559.

FIESOLE.

See FLORENCE: ORIGIN AND NAME.

FIFTEEN, The (Jacobite Rebellion),

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1715.

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1869-1870.

FIFTH MONARCHY MEN.